I want to get to the point where I explain shame for what it really is: a sham, a cloak draped over the noxious culture of false civility. Shame, as it’s currently used, masks truth. It was never meant to control us. It was meant to guide us—to awaken us.
At its origin, shame wasn’t punishment.
It was reflection.
It was interface.
It was intuition.
It was the Rule of 4:
The four directions: west, north, south, east
The four seasons: autumn, winter, summer, spring
The four elements: earth, water, air, fire
The four bodies: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual
(Did it bother you? The order I put them in? :P)
But instead of honoring this inner compass, we inserted the patriarchy right in the center—and nothing else.
Modern shame responses?
Attack self; reducing ourselves, people pleasing, self-critism at the tinest of interactions
Attack others; rigid defference to adherence to social norms, violent projections
Withdraw; ghosting others, refusing to speak up to save the relationships
Avoid; distract-o-tainment, overbooking and busying your days
But what if that isn’t dysfunction? What if it’s a misreading of sacred code?
Let’s reframe:
Fire – the impulse to burn through what doesn’t serve
Air – the breath of confrontation, clarity, or confusion
Water – the retreat, the release, the emotional flow
Earth – the boundary, the root, the integration point
We were meant to feel these as signals—not symptoms.
Releasing that patriarchal overlay feels freeing because it is. But personal freedom is not enough. We need a new societal foundation, one that unbinds the gendered genital norms & steers us back toward harmony with the natural world.
Because let’s be honest:
Is it safer to live with wolves and bears…or with a conservative American man?
Many women have already answered.
& what they’re choosing isn’t danger. It’s truth.
We must stop pretending this cultural bind hasn’t damaged us on a species level. Not just society. Not just civilization. Species.
We’ve mistaken our ability to invoke shame in others as power within ourselves.
We’ve built systems that reward this performance of control.
We’re still so easily seduced by appearances, by temptations, by the façade—while the inner world rots.
& so his-story keeps writing itself again and again, unable to stop-pause & reflect on the damage that is being done by its actions.
It’s time for HER to step up—not as a gender, but as a correction. Not womanhood. Not feminism. No reaction. No performance. Just presence.
I want to talk to other humans about this—but most don’t have the bandwidth.
They’re still stuck looping shame and pain, translating truth into scripts, and casting everyone they lay eyes on as the characters in the background of their truth tables.
I recently told someone I need intellectual intimacy to feel connected. I asked her what she wanted. She ghosted. Surprised? I’m not. Sad? Yes. Others? They spiral into personal narratives instead of seeing that their story is just evidence of the collective condition, something I desire to be free from, not triumph over but walk out of and replace with something differently different.
So maybe it’s time I write a manual for how to interact with me.
A kind of cosmic onboarding sequence.
If someone resonates, great. If not?
Then I know not to waste my time.
I’m trying to connect. I really am.
But I’m not interested in performing.
I’m interested in truth.
Even if it means being alone in &Land until the right ones arrive.
Feel free to contact me if you have any desire to discuss this topic in the depths.
If you made it this far, here is a freely found copy of pocaterra on shame. I’ve barely driven into it based the introductions. It’s a little…a very good reflection of the era it was produced in, so to say.
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